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Tuesday Treasure | April 20, 2010

In the spring of that year, they left their home in Forest Junction and headed west, settling on a homestead eight miles southeast of North Platte, Nebraska, on the old California trail. Their home was near the Sioux look-out, a hill where the Indians watched the immigrants traveling down the valley.

I have a poem, handwritten by Katherine, that relays some of her experiences while living in Nebraska.

Do you remember Tom the day we left our Forest Junction home

To go west where the Buzzard nest and the Buffalo did roam

And when we landed at North Platte the home of Buffalo Bill

It was there they drank their whiskey straight, it was they shot to kill

We wandered up and down the Platte with Casey close behind

And Anton with his old shot gun a following in the line

We roamed around until we found a place to build a home

We made a corral and dug a well and build a house of stone

We gathered up the prairie grass prepared by Buffalo

To cook our grub and keep us warm when it was ten below

And then them bloody Indians come and Katie all alone

But she was brave and stayed them off until the Major come

We went to raising cattle in that we could not fail

If we could not raise them otherwise we would raise them by the tail

And that bronco that y rode I eust to call him Ned

At first he stand up on his heals and then upon his head

But now dear Tom the time has come when we can ride no more

And we will soon meet the old cowboy upon the other shore

I’m not sure is she wrote this poem while living in Nebraska or sometime after. It’s a real treasure to have something in her handwriting. Katherine and Orville went to Florida in 1881 and back to Wisconsin in 1896.

Orville and Katherine were aunt and uncle to my grandmother, Viola Seybold Trautmann. She lived with them when she was in high school or college in Appleton, I’m not sure which. How fun to find out more about them from another side of the family. “Uncle Orville” made several things out of wood and gave them as gifts to my grandmother (a little foot stool and a small box are two that I know of.)